Apple’s original Mighty Mouse was one of the company’s biggest missteps: an expensive and finicky input device that most customers reacted to with either apathy or rage. Apple’s long needed something to replace it, and today’s surplus of Apple announcements revealed the Mighty Mouse’s sensor. Gentlemen, admire the Magic Mouse.

As rumored, the Magic Mouse is an input device that supports on-surface gestures. A multitouch capacitor is nestled on the top of the device, beneath the hard acrylic, and is available at any time to use for pinching, swirling, flicking and the other multitouch gestures supported by Snow Leopard. This continues Apple’s initiative to bring multitouch to all their devices and finally gives desktop users a decent way to take advantage of OS X’s advanced gesture support.

The Magic Mouse is totally wireless, and uses Bluetooth for pairing. That might be a problem: I have never used a Bluetooth mouse that didn’t have issues involving waking up and shutting down, or suffer from power drain issues. Still, Apple is claiming that the Magic Mouse’s Bluetooth support won’t slow it down: they are boasting an astonishing 4-month battery life on a single charge.

We’ll have to wait until the reviews come in, but this looks like a fantastic, and sexy, update to the dud of the Mighty Mouse. Like its predecessor, the Magic Mouse is now shipping with all iMacs, but if you want one to pair with your MacBook or MacBook Pro, you can buy it from the Apple Store today for $69.